Lee Marshall

Two bravura performances can’t disguise the thinness of a script that exposes just how uninteresting this ‘sliding doors’ game can be. The Roads Not Taken redeems itself, partly, through the compassion and sensitivity with which it deals with the mind-ravaging illness at its core.

The final result won't fully satisfy either hardcore cineastes or those looking for soft porn in a pretty package - but the magic wand of art will help to broaden the film's commercial base beyond the cheap-thrill camp.

There are more engaging fireworks, or at least small sparks, when the film begins to dig into the feelings, friendships and jealousies of its two main protagonists.

Deep down this is a conventional and predictably plotted period drama about a clash between bodice-ripping passion and social mores.

If some of this loud horror material looks frankly absurd, that’s only, Amenabar would no doubt argue, because it reflects the hackneyed, trick-or-treats way in which we give form and body to our night fears. Fine, but for a thriller to thrill, such didactic admonishments are not enough.

Some moments of poetry and emotional truth lurk in among the pretentious high grass. But the sometimes baffling dialogue is a serious subtitle endurance test ­for non French-speaking audiences.

This tense, memorable study of one man’s breakdown and the unreliable stories it generates may not live up to the promise of its first excellent half hour, but it is still an audacious piece of filmmaking, one that imprints a memorably skewed worldview on the ears and retina.

little can be done to disguise the weakness of an undercooked script based on an idea Tornatore apparently had in his bottom drawer for decades.

It’s a small, worthy, film that works reasonably well, although there’s something a little too linear about its structure.

Courage becomes not so much a study of a brave political theatre troupe but a portrait of a country at the crossroads, one that is likely to resonate with audiences worldwide.

Bouzid’s film is also warm, passionate and sexy in a well-read kind of way – a surefire route to wider arthouse acceptance.

In the end, this is a film that is more emotionally than sexually voyeuristic.

Writer-director Andrea Di Stefano crafts a tense yet also rather moving thriller-melodrama out of the most cliched premise: a cop who is talked into running a favour for a gangland boss on his last night before retiring. It’s been a while since we’ve seen such a stylish Italian crime thriller.

Rooted in a great injustice, Lubo ­– the film – becomes a curious, sometimes intriguing but ultimately frustrating portrait of a man undone by that injustice.

A suffocating slipknot drama, it embeds violence and extortion in a destructive ecosystem, showing that every favour is loaded, every gift poisoned, every debt unpayable. Brutality never cleanses in Kim’s impressive debut; it simply engenders more brutality.

Gavagai is refreshingly grown-up in the way it sets up satirical targets and then complicates them – pointing out, for example, that tensions around caste, exclusion of the ‘other’ and the guilt of privilege are not the exclusive preserves of white people.

Hardly a second too long despite its almost two-hour running time, this urgent, absorbing documentary should be required viewing for those, inside or outside the United States, who are struggling to make sense of the recent presidential election. It will also speak to anyone interested in the battle over books and gender issues that has been raging for some time now in the American educational sector.